Olly Robbins: Mandelson row threatens UK national security

The senior civil servant sacked over the Peter Mandelson row has said the government’s handling of the scandal has exposed the UK to national security risks.

Sir Olly Robbins, who lost his job at the top of the Foreign Office over the scandal, defended his team and said Starmer should have realised the reputational risk the appointment would bring.

In an extraordinary session lasting more than two hours, he said Mandelson had not “failed” vetting, but that security experts were “leaning against” clearance in what was a “borderline” case.

Defending his own judgement, he cast doubt on Keir Starmer’s, telling MPs: “I regret that the due diligence process which threw up, as I understand it, serious reputational risks didn't colour the prime minister's judgement.”

Mandelson had been sacked from two previous government roles before he was appointed by Keir Starmer as UK ambassador to the US.

The appointment was announced before security vetting was completed and he was sacked after files released by US authorities revealed the strength of his relationship with late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. Other documents then suggested that he had passed on market-sensitive information during the financial crisis of Gordon Brown’s government.

It subsequently emerged that UK Security Vetting (UKSV) had flagged serious concerns about Mandelson’s fitness for clearance.

It’s understood that the vetting team ticked the red box on a colour-coded government form – making an explicit recommendation against clearance.

A “furious” Prime Minister Starmer told the House of Commons that Foreign Office officials made a “deliberate” decision to keep him and other ministers in the dark.

Robbins – who was singled out for criticism by the PM in a statement to the Commons – said he had not been shown that form and “did not fully understand” why he had been sacked.

He said it would not have been “proper” for him to divulge all to the prime minister, but the issues raised during vetting did not relate to Epstein.

And he told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee: “It may sound paranoid, but I think that even the level of disclosure that the government has offered over the last few days, British national security does not benefit from this, so we have to ask whose does.”

Robbins said the Foreign Office was put under “constant pressure” from Downing Street over Mandelson’s appointment, with a rush to ensure its completion in time for Donald Trump re-entering the White House.

The prime minister’s team did not have “an interest in whether, only an interest in when” sign-off would be granted, MPs were told.

Before that happened, Mandelson was already permitted access to “highly classified briefing on a case-by-case basis”, it was said.

Robbins said there was a “debate” between the Cabinet Office and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) over the need for clearance because he was a peer at the time.

He stated: “A position taken from the Cabinet Office was that there was no need to vet Mandelson, he was a member of the House of Lords, he was a Privy councillor.

“The risks that attended his appointment were well known and have been made clear to the prime minister before appointment.

“In the end, the FCDO insisted and put its foot down. I understand my predecessor had to be very firm in person, but that was a live debate at the point of announcement, and I think it's important to make that clear.”

The session came a day after Starmer told the Commons it was “frankly staggering” that senior civil servants had not informed him that the disgraced ex-peer had failed national security vetting.

Starmer told the House: “I simply do not accept that Foreign Office officials could not have informed me of UKSV’s recommendations, whilst also maintaining the necessary confidentiality that vetting requires.

“There is no law that stops civil servants sensibly flagging UKSV's recommendations while protecting detailed, sensitive vetting information to allow ministers to make judgements on appointments or explaining matters to parliament.

“So let me be very clear: the recommendation in the Peter Mandelson case could and should have been shared with me before he took up his post.”

When asked if the PM was correct to have expected more information on the vetting process – an “invasive” process itself subject to security and data-control issues – Robbins said that was a “dangerous misunderstanding of the necessity of confidentiality of process”.

He went on: “You are not supposed to share the findings and reports of UKSV, other than in the exceptional circumstances where doing so allows for the specific mitigation of risk.”

The session also heard claims that Robbins had been asked to find a job for Starmer’s former director of communications Matthew Doyle, now a Labour peer, within the Foreign Office, but was told not to inform the foreign secretary.

The request is said to have taken place during restructuring efforts which would have involved job losses in the department.

Robbins said: “I found it very hard to think how I would explain to the office what the credentials of Matthew were to be in an important head of mission role when I was in danger of making very senior, very experienced diplomats leave the office.

“I did my duty, I looked at the forward-look of available jobs, I shared with Number 10 what some of those might be. It was, to be honest, hard to find something that I thought might be suitable, but I also felt quite uncomfortable about it and I kept giving advice that I thought this would be very hard for the office, and was hard for me personally to defend.”

Robbins said removing security clearance from Mandelson, after he was in post, may have damaged the UK's relationship with Washington, and he was “worried at various points in this story that the prime minister was being given lines to deploy publicly that the Foreign Office had not had a chance to think through and work through”.

He defended the vetting process and said clearance is often a matter of “managing and mitigating risks” and should not be a “pass/fail piety test” or the result will be “robbing the British state of a lot of very, very capable people with complicated lives and potential vulnerabilities”.

He said: “I really, really don't want that for the sake of this country. If anything, this government needs to be served by an ever increasing range of people with broad experience and interesting lives, not suddenly find that the only people we can employ in sensitive roles are ones who raise no issues whatsoever.”

Committee chair Emily Thornberry of Labour said: “There’s interesting and [then there’s] Peter Mandelson’s life and the threats that he may have had to the British state.”